Playoff Review: Bucs Well Beaten By Giants 24-14

So the Bucs season comes to an end with a disappointing defeat at the hands of Eli Manning and the Giants. The Bucs started promisingly, taking a 7-0 lead but 2 key turnovers and a leaky offensive line proved too much for the Bucs to overcome.

Brandon Jacobs 2 TD’s helped the Giants to a comfortable win.

So the Bucs 2007 season comes to an end with more of a splutter than a “Fire Dem Cannons”. A dissapointing offensive performance meant that the Bucs could never get themselves back in the game until it was too late.

I had high hopes prior to the game, that the Bucs would progress. We seemed to match up well on paper, and for the 1st quarter things were looking good. The Bucs D caused 2 quick three and outs for the Giants and a TD late in the first quarter capped a good performance on both sides of the ball. However the Giants, regrouped and hit back with 24 unanswered points to take the game away from the Bucs.

Using a dink and dunk offence to hit the Tampa 2 defence at it’s weak spot Manning engineered TD drives that kept the defence on the pitch and ate up large amounts of the clock. The Bucs offence on the other hand spluttered and did look like a team that hadn’t played that much over the last few weeks. The major headache seemed to be the amount of pressure that the Bucs line was giving up. On every play it seemed that there were blue jerseys in the backfield and causing Garcia to run for his life. For the Bucs to have any chance Donald Penn and Jeremy Trueblood were going to need great games. However, Michael Strahan certainly had the beating of Trueblood.

I really can’t get down about this loss. The team have performed well above the level I was expecting and to get to the playoffs was some achievement. OK some will say that the NFC South was a poor division this season (it was) but you still have to beat your divisional rivals. We have unearthed a few stars in Jovan Haye, Greg White and Earnest Graham and Gaines Adams is looking more and more like he’ll be worthy of that #4 pick. Jon Gruden has possibly had his finest season as a coach in being able to cope with the raft of injuries and still putting together a team that can compete.

There are building blocks for the future in this team but there are areas that need to be addressed through FA and the draft (that’s another post all together) but to Coach Gruden and all the Tampa team i say “FIRE DEM CANNONS!!!!!”